


Traditions

by blackmetaldahlia



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Getting Shit Out Of The Way, Getting Together, M/M, New Year's Eve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 20:25:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5599627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackmetaldahlia/pseuds/blackmetaldahlia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt sniffs and gives Foggy a brief little smile, that he hopes conveys the message he intended, which was: <i>Please don’t wax melancholic about how I lied to you about a fundamental part of who I am for almost a decade.</i> Foggy doesn’t get the message.<br/></p>
<p>
“Any other secrets you want to get out now, so that we can leave it all behind?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Traditions

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know what this is but it made me sad.

Foggy is dragging his space heater towards the roof access stairs while Matt sniffs through everything in his picnic basket – which is _absolutely_ not a pail shaped like a sandcastle, your echolocation bullshit is just broken, Murdock – when he freezes and says “Wait. How much do fireworks suck?”

Matt frowns, a wedge of gouda in one hand and a capri sun in the other, and hesitates. “They suck, but not enough that I don’t want to do this. It’s tradition at this point.”

“Dude, traditions shouldn’t suck!” He sounds so earnest, and Matt gives him the most sincere smile he can manage. “We don’t have to do this if you’d rather, I don’t know – “

“Foggy, they suck no matter what I’m doing. My first New Years after, well, _this,_ ” he gestures vaguely towards his face in their shorthand for _the tragically bullshit accident that got radioactive waste in my eyes and gave me superpowers while blinding me_ , “I spent all night in an ice cold bath and went underwater whenever I heard that awful whistling sound. It didn’t help. Nothing does. Now move.”

He puts the goods back in the pail – sorry, _basket_ , and moves to lift Foggy’s decade-old space heater onto his shoulder. It’s heavy in the way that only outdated appliances are. It’s really not cold enough to warrant it, but Foggy claims that being descended from Vikings doesn’t make him any less susceptible to the shivers, so Matt indulges him. It’s not like he pays for the electricity on the roof. He doubts the landlord even knows that the old outlets near the access door even work.

“My name’s Matt Murdock and I’m made of muscles and self-flagellation,” Foggy mutters, going to get the pail and the two bottles of cheap wine, courtesy of Josie. “Was that my abs or my catholic guilt flexing? Who knows!”

Matt snorts at him as he fumbles the door open with an awful _skreeeeeee_ and makes a mental note to oil those hinges. “It was both,” he calls back down as he sets the space heater in the most open area he can find. “I only have one wine glass.”

“Buddy,” Foggy says as he makes his way up the stairs with his goodies in tow. “We are grown-ass men. I’m wearing a tie. I mean, it’s _un_ tied, but it’s still a tie. We need to offset this. We’re drinking straight from the bottle, tonight.”

Four years of undergrad and three years of law school flashes before Matt’s – well, not his eyes, obviously. That would be useless. “I just had a flashback to the entirety of our pre-bar acquaintance,” is what Matt says to try and convey what just happened.

Foggy laughs, and it’s a deep diaphragm laugh that Matt hasn’t heard in way too long. “Do you remember that game of Kings junior year where we all had our own bottles of rum?” Matt doesn’t remember, which is probably the point. “I think you were already mostly wasted once you got that ace and decided that moderation was for _losers._ ”

According to all accounts, Matt had giggled upon Foggy telling him his card, and downed the remaining two-thirds of the bottle in one, much to the absolute shock of everyone else in their year. Probably not how Stick intended for Matt to use his training. Most of the other people playing the game had either given up keeping up after thirty seconds of chugging, and half of those who _did_ keep up wound up getting arrested later that night for being too rambunctious in a nearby Chipotle.

He woke up in a stranger’s bed with his cane and socks (but not shoes) AWOL, one of his hands sporting bright green nail polish, and most exasperatingly, one of the crowns on his back molar gone. The stranger turned out to be half of the Anime Interest Floor, who assured him that nothing had happened and convinced him to watch five episodes of _Neon Genesis Evangelion_ before his hangover became manageable and he talked the president into walking him back to his dorm.

That last sentence is the only detail of that morning that he hasn’t shared with Foggy.

“That was a terrifying morning,” he tells Foggy, sincerely. “Not as terrifying as our first year of law school when you got fucking Edward Fortyhandsed and tried to lead me – “

Foggy bursts out in absolutely hysterical laughter and Matt can taste tears on the air. “I’d _forgotten_ about that night! You panicked and, _and_ – “

“And had a completely reasonable reaction given that I was slipped fucking _ecstasy_ ,” Matt says, firmly, and he plugs the space heater in. It takes a few tries. He had tried to wrench the bottle out of Foggy’s hand and gotten confused when it wouldn’t come, and constructed the sort of scenario that only the truly fucked up could come up with, where Foggy’s hands had been replaced by wine bottles by a foul witch. He had cried.

He still has nightmares about that witch when he gets tequila drunk, a detail that he _has_ shared with Foggy. It’s probably the least awful out of the recurring nightmares he has, so at least there’s that.

Foggy sobers enough to clap him on the back and then sit down on the blanket he had brought over from his place. “We have one hour to get smashed, and then I want you to narrate exactly what fireworks are like for you. We’re turning the tables this year, buddy.”

Matt’s narration is probably going to go something like “High pitched whistling. Boom that vibrates my _teeth_. Pain everywhere. Resisting the urge to scream,” which doesn’t really stack up against “Holy shit, Matt, that’s the coolest shade of green I’ve ever seen! Matt, that one was shaped like a heart! Matt, they made two of them collide! Matt, that one was shaped like a dick! Yeah, I’m just kidding, Matt. Matt! Matt! Matt!” but he’s willing to give it a shot.

Foggy’s holding out the wine bottle and Matt takes it with a smile, before pulling the cork out with his teeth and downing at least half a wine glass in one go. “You’re such a showoff,” Foggy says, taking a small sip. “Savor this, bud. It’s from Josie’s secret stash.”

It’s an incredibly dry red, not especially strong, and he truly doubts the existence of Josie’s secret stash. “Secret stash my _ass_ ,” Matt says, rolling his shoulders. Some teenagers are shooting off bottle rockets a few blocks away. “She probably pulled this off the shelf by the creepy fishtank. Or _out of_ the creepy fish tank.”

“There is no creepy fish tank,” Foggy reminds him for the umpteenth time. Foggy refuses to tell him what it _is_ that is making those sounds, but he promises that it’s not fish. It’s probably eels or lobsters or some other technicality.

They sit in companionable silence for a brief while, Foggy alternating sips of wine and capri sun while Matt digs in to the gouda. It’s from Foggy’s uncle, who was a butcher, and was also the only thing in the pail that wasn’t, well. On the same level as capri suns in terms of maturity. He’s pretty sure there are _zebra cakes_ nestled in one of the turrets.

“So. This year.” Foggy finally says, and Matt feels his body heat tick up just a notch. “It was definitely a year.”

“It was,” Matt agrees. “Three hundred sixty five days. Fifty two weeks. Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred – “

“Don’t quote RENT at me if you’ve never even seen it,” Foggy says sternly. “But seriously. What a year.”

Matt sniffs and gives Foggy a brief little smile, that he _hopes_ conveys the message he intended, which was: Please don’t wax melancholic about how I lied to you about a fundamental part of who I am for almost a decade. Foggy doesn’t get the message.

“Any other secrets you want to get out now, so that we can leave it all behind?”

The biggest and most petulant frown is what Foggy gets, but only for a moment before Matt chugs the rest of the bottle and chucks it into the abandoned trash can. “I’m bisexual,” he sniffs, and then he considers just letting out everything he’s always been terrified to tell Foggy.

“Well, fucking _duh_ ,” Foggy says. “You fucked like nineteen guys in college.”

“I never actually told you,” Matt says. “Which is the same thing as keeping it a secret. It’s how it worked with my senses.”

Foggy’s silent again. “I’m bi, too,” he mutters, and Matt nods.

“Thank you.” He hesitates. If they’re gonna do a secret for secret exchange, he’s pretty sure he and Foggy would be ridiculously unevenly matched. But the wine is burning in his stomach, and why the fuck not. Foggy’s going to leave eventually, no matter what. “I know who my mother is. She’s a nun. She left because she had postpartum psychosis and tried to kill me when I was a baby.”

“Oh, _Jesus,_ ” Foggy says, and then, “I’m adopted, and my birth mother is a mobster.”

Well _that_ was unexpected. “I was tested for borderline personality disorder senior year. I never went to get the results.”

Foggy’s heart skips a beat and Matt swallows to keep from saying more. “I was grateful that you were blind for a long time – people tend not to like how I look.”

“I don’t know how to relate to people and feel guilty for manipulating them even if it’s just a normal conversation where I ask them to do something, and you’re included in that.”

“ _Dude,_ ” Foggy says. “Wow. I – I don’t know what to say to that. I, uh. Hmmm.” His heart is doing all sorts of weird things, and Matt swallows a bitter laugh. “I don’t actually believe in God.”

 _Push, Murdock, push,_ Matt thinks, and wonders why he should while knowing that he _had to do it._ “The only reason I haven’t given up on – on _everything_ , is because it was beaten into me that I can’t. I can’t give up on anything.”

“I’m terrified every day that I’m going to wake up and find out you’ve been killed by someone else or yourself and it’s going to be what you _wanted_ all along.” Foggy’s voice cracks on the last word.

Matt purses his lips, and then it comes bursting out of him, like a water through a busted dam. Or a firework in the night sky. “I know that I’m going to be too much for you some day and you’re going to just _leave_ , like everyone else did, and ever since you found out about me being near you feels like waiting for a bomb to go off but I’m too selfish to just let you _go_.” And there he goes, being selfish and manipulating and Foggy’s suddenly _crying_ , _he made Foggy cry._

“ _Matt,_ ” Foggy whispers as he wipes his eyes. “Holy shit. No. I’m not leaving.”

“You don’t know that,” Matt tells him, because it’s true. Nobody ever knows if they’ll stay. Even when they leave because of things beyond their control, they’re still _gone._ He’s not crying. He probably should be crying. Foggy is.

“Surprise, buddy, I _do_ ,” Foggy says, before setting down his capri sun and coming to sit closer to Matt. Very slowly, he puts an arm around him and rests his head on Matt’s shoulder. “I’m not. I’m not fucking leaving you. I need you.”

Matt shakes his head. “You don’t. I – I _wanted,_ want, you to feel that way. But you don’t. Nobody actually needs anybody, no matter how much it feels like it.” He thinks to those awful weeks when he and Foggy weren’t even talking. “Even if it feels like you’ve been gutted when they’re gone, you can always keep going.” It sounds like a lie, but it has to be true.

“You’re one fucked up guy,” Foggy breathes, and Matt hates how even his heartbeat is. “I kind of figured that out when it turned out you were a crimefighting vigilante. But damn. Jesus.”

“Yeah,” Matt says softly. He pulls Foggy’s wine bottle towards himself with his feet and finishes it as Foggy’s heartbeat wavers. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Foggy says sternly. “I have one more secret.”

Matt makes an inquisitive sound, and Foggy sits up enough to press his lips to Matt’s, just as the first fireworks go off. It _hurts_ , both the sudden booming in his ears and his spine and his fingernails, and also the burn of Foggy’s mouth on his. And Foggy’s doing this – he’s doing it _knowing_ everything about Matt, and that’s. That’s something. He doesn’t know how he feels.

Foggy pulls away, still crying a little. “Happy New Year. If – if you won’t let me promise that I’m _never_ leaving, I’m at least going to promise that I’ll be here for the next one.”

“And next year, you’ll promise the one after that?” Matt asks, softly.

Foggy kisses him again, and it feels like Matt’s ears are going to start bleeding. “Yes. We're adding it to our tradition.”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year, all!


End file.
